The American Dream as Reflected in Richard Rodriguezs Hunger of Memory: the Education of Richard Rodriguez
The American dream is a reflection of the ideal life that each individual in America should live. The dream guides each individual on the ideals that contribute to the achievement of the desired American society. According to the American dream, the three values of freedom, equality, and opportunity are important, and each individual who lives in the American society has the personal responsibility of exercising the values (Stuttgart 17). The objective of the American dream, according to Stuttgart (19), is to ensure that every person, irrespective of his tribe, nationality, race, or religion, lives a life of happiness. The American dream also encourages the idea that people who come from other cultures can get absorbed into the American society without their loss of their original cultures.
It is within the perspective of cultural absorption that the student analyzes the reflection of the American dream in Rodriguezs Hunger of Memory. Rodriguezs book (autobiography) considers the cultural aspect of language as the most critical aspect of entering the American society. In reality, there is a lose connection between the American dream and what happens in the system of education. Rodriguez must accept with a lot of difficulty that for him to integrate into the American society and its education system, he must learn English. Yet according to the American dream, people should integrate into the American culture without losing their original cultural identities. The ideal situation, therefore, should that the education system should enable Rodriguez communicate and learn in his original language (Spanish) but this is not the case because the education system of America is not bilingual it uses English only.
Rodriguez experiences many difficulties while integrating into the American system of education. In his childhood memories, Rodriguez shows that he is intimate about his first language of Spanish. However, Spanish is not the public or official language in America yet for him to use his American education to find a job in future, he must learn English. Danahay (294) describes Hunger of Memory as A eulogy of lost intimacy embodied in his Spanish speaking childhood. Such description points towards the fact that Rodriguez regrets about his loss of contact with his Spanish culture as a result of his experience in the American education. Since Rodriguez has been immersed into English, he insists on using Spanish as a language of communicating with his family at home. Since Rodriguez has given the Spanish language less preference in public communication he fails to see the richness and the good literatures of the Spanish culture. In reality, therefore, there is no realization of the American dream in Rodriguezs education because the American system of education does not treat the Spanish culture equally with the American culture.
The consequence of Rodriguezs choice to put the Spanish language to the periphery is not good on his culture. Danahay (295) analyzes that Rodriguez lacks the ability and intelligence to communicate beyond the sensibilities of the personal interactions of family life. Danahay criticizes the American dream in that it detaches Rodriguez from the realities of his culture. He can only use the Spanish language for narrating about his family and communicating within his family. In other words, the American dream has eliminated the development of Spanish culture in Rodriguez. The narrator has a narrow perception of his culture and language because of the limited use of Spanish for communication within the American education (Danahay 296).
There is an idea that the American dream fails to appreciate. The culture of an individual is embedded in his language. If the American dream offers equal opportunities for cultural development irrespective of ones nationality, this statement should be reflected in Rodriguezs cultural growth. The American experience creates a lot of confusion in Rodriguez. The narrator, for example, does not appreciate his personal image as a Mexican.
The experience he has gained through the American education has given him an inferior attitude towards his race. He expresses his dissatisfaction with his appearance when he says: I wanted to forget I had a body because I had a brown body, (Rodriguez 126). Such utterance shows that the American culture has affected Rodriguez to believe that he is less human because he is not white.
There is racist ideology in the American education system and its culture. The reader wonder, for example, that why does Rodriguez have to say that he prefers forgetting he had a body? It means that he was racially segregated within the education system so that he considered himself inferior. This is not the way to achieve the American dream: when people of other cultures are made to feel that it is superior to be White than Brown.
Rodriguezs book shows several instances where there are assimilation challenges. The American culture holds the other cultures in contempt in the process of assimilating people from the other cultures. In Hunger of Memory, Rodriguez shows that he at odds with himself and his Spanish culture. He does not celebrate his Spanish ideology. He narrates: I am the only one in the family whose face is severely cut to the line of ancient Indian ancestors (the ancestors of the Spanish). My profile suggests one of those beak-nosed Mayan sculptures- the eagle like face, (Rodriguez 115). Such expressions show the hatred that Rodriguez has gained as an influence of the American culture. Why would the narrator talk about his appearance with such contempt and anger if Americas education and culture aim to achieve the ideals of the American dream? The book suggests that in practice, the American dream is not being realized when people from other cultures integrate into the American culture.
Through Rodriguezs experience in the American culture, he associates his brown skin with bad things. Language and knowledge (education) play important roles in Rodriguezs understanding of the metaphor of self (Marquez 134). The awareness that he gains, while experiencing the American culture, links his brown skin with ideas like hard labor, strong muscles, low academic achievement, and poverty. Some of these ideas are the very ones that the American dream intends to eliminate.
The American dream desires a society where each individual irrespective of his origin is free from poverty and ignorance (Stuttgart 19). However, to achieve these dreams, the American culture and education system should not characterize other cultures as poor and describe their people as low intellectual achievers. Such descriptions demean the ability of Americans of other cultures to contribute to the achievement of the American dream.
The American education system widens the cultural differences between the Mexicans and Americans because Rodriguez gains better understanding of the differences while receiving the American education. As a young adult, Rodriguez attends education at Stanford. He comes to understand the Mexican-American oppressions that are connected to social classes in a very clear manner. He performs manual labor at the construction site and it is here that he comes to understand the class oppressions that the Americans direct towards the Mexicans. During the summers sun, he identifies his hands and faces as looking like those of the Mexican laborers. During this time, he understood the clear differences between Mexicans and Americans, and that Mexicans were the poor laborer referred to as los pobres (Rodriguez 138). However, the American education does not help Rodriguez because it only alienates him from his people. The American education gives Rodriguez Different attitude of the mind and imagination of himself, (Rodriquez 138).
However, Rodriguezs intellectual development changes his feeling about his body image. This, however, happens later, and the reader may not credit the change towards the American education or the culture. Rodriguez repossesses his body through long-distance running (Jeffrey 126). Rodriguez, according to Rosaura (160), considered the sport (long-distance running) a thing of the middle class.
Rodriguez narrates how, in his thirties, he gains the body that he lacked when in his youthful stages of growth. Rodriguez (136-137) narrates, (His) stomach lipped tight by muscle. The shoulders rounded by chin-ups, the arms veined. He continues narrating that it is the kind of body that he can clothe in the double-breasted Italian suit and custom-made English shoes that have become the reassuring reminders of public success, (Rodriguez 137). However, it is critical to consider the stage when he gains the better understanding of self-image and starts appreciating his Mexican looks. It is in his thirties, and we can conclude that it is his sense of maturity that gives him the new feeling that is totally different from the feeling he had while receiving the American education (Alarcon 149).
Even though Rodriguezs perception of his body image changes as his intellectual development occurs in his thirties, the detachment from the realities of his Mexican culture and people is persistent. Since the American culture is full of class oppression directed towards the Mexicans, he rejects The duality of his working class origins, and instead chooses to embrace the middle class manners, (Alarcon 52). It means that Rodriguez has lost touch with his culture and he lacks identity with his working class people. He befits the description of a brainwashed individual who has refused to accept his culture and people. He has chosen to live in the class system that is encouraged by the American culture, and this shows that the culture and education of America do not assist the foreigners towards the realization of the American dream. The implication is that with the class feelings of racial superiority, people like Rodriguez feel embarrassed to identify with their own cultures. By extension, the implication is that Rodriguezs American education experience has made him identify with the middle class than the working class where the majority of the Mexican people are.
The American dream is like utopia. Religion has an important role in promoting the American dream that is not realized in reality. However, there is a conflict of religion. Rodriguez was raised in the Catholic religion, and his religion encouraged him not to dream about utopia (Rodriguez 37). However, the American culture and education has Protestantism as the dominant religion. The religion, unlike his catholic religion, encourages utopia. As Rodriguez (45) narrates, in the catholic religion, AIDS signifies a fall. He narrates that AIDS signals the men who aspired the mock-angelic settled for a shirt of hair and they are forced to face penance, martyrdom, and death, (45). In his narration, Rodriguezs sculpted body he has at the beginning of the story is compared to the dead martyred body of a victim of AIDS. In the new culture of Protestantism, body-building is not celebrated because it is, A parody of labor, a useless accumulation of the laborers bulk and strength. The American culture disregards the gym, and it has a connection with the Protestant ideologies. Rodriguez, due to his American cultural influence, describes the gym as, A closet of privacy and exhibition gallery, and he says that, The gym is nothing if it does not lead to transcendence, where homosexuals can move from auto-sexuality to non-sexuality, (Rodriguez 39). Such descriptions of the gym in the American culture are meant to discourage people from exercising so that they do not build muscles like the Mexicans.
In conclusion, Rodriguezs Hunger of Memory does not reflect the American dream. The dream emphasizes that all people, irrespective of their cultures, have the same opportunities for personal development. Also, the American dream recognizes respect for other cultures as people from different origins get assimilated into the American culture. The aim of the dream is to emancipate everyone from poverty and ignorance. However, in Hunger of Memory, the reader confronts a situation where Rodriguez gains a negative attitude towards his culture and people. He hates his brown skin and he does not want to imagine that he is human because he is brown. In addition, Rodriguez reduces his use of Spanish language to communication at home because the American education trains him to use English for official and public communication. It means that languages do not have the same opportunities as the American dream purports. Also, Rodriguez gains strong hatred against his people, associating them with hard labor and poverty, yet poverty is the thing that the American dream wants to eliminate. However, as Rodriguez moves from poverty and changes to middle-class, he should segregate his people as he does- he rejects any identity with the working class. Consequently, the life of Rodriguez does not reflect the achievement of the American dream.